As regards the ultimate psychological nature of the first "Moral" influences of these factors, we are face to face with a problem concerning which there is at present no very great degree of certainty or unanimity, i. e. the problem of the general nature of the forces of repression which inhibit the immoral or anti-social tendencies of the mind. Freud[222] is inclined to lay stress upon the impulses centering round the self (though more especially in connection with the repression of the sexual trends); others, like McCurdy[223] Trotter[224] and Hart[225], emphasize the importance of the gregarious tendencies in this connection. Whatever may be their ultimate basis in the mind, there can be little doubt however that these moral forces on the whole increase with advancing culture, thus tending always to substitute an indirect or negative for the more primitive direct or positive expression of the hate attitude towards the parents.

As regards the second factor, the arousal of love in opposition Love that conflicts with and represses hate to hate is evidently dependent partly (a) upon the child's own innate capacities for affection, tenderness and gratitude; partly (b) upon the extent to which these capacities are awakened and called into play by a kind and loving attitude on the part of the parent towards the child. As regards these factors it seems very difficult to say in the present state of our knowledge whether there has been any considerable or lasting change during the later period of human development. The extent to which tender feelings have been aroused between parents and children of the same sex (for it is of course with the relations between these that we are chiefly concerned here) has naturally varied from age to age and from one family system to another; the intensity and frequency of these feelings being as a rule in inverse proportion to the intensity of the hate attitude. Thus it is that those times and places which have produced the minimum of hatred between parents and children have also probably on the whole tended to bring about the greatest degree of repression of such hatred as did still exist—the repression being due to the influence of love tendencies which were opposed to those of hate. Nevertheless it is not easy to bring forward any evidence to show a general tendency towards increase of the tender feelings with which we are here concerned. Savage parents in many cases appear to exhibit a very considerable degree of affection towards their children, while the children are in their turn often not backward in their manifestations of love and respect. Parents in civilised communities, on the other hand, have often shown themselves (under a veneer of kindness or consideration) singularly brutal and selfish in the treatment of their children; the latter not infrequently manifesting a corresponding lack of genuine affection for their parents. Under these circumstances it would seem that we are perhaps justified in attributing the undoubted increase in the repression of the hate attitude to the more efficient operation of the "moral" factors, rather than to any growth of tenderness between parent and child which might have served more effectually to counter-act the hostile tendencies.

CHAPTER XVI
ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT
OF THE FAMILY TENDENCIES—LOVE ASPECTS

The problems connected with the origin, development and The love attitude influence upon human history of the love attitude in relation to the family are, as we have said, in some respects both more important and more difficult than those connected with the hate attitude—more important because, as we have seen throughout, the hate attitude is to a considerable extent merely a consequence of, or at any rate dependent on, the love attitude; more difficult, because the psychic tendencies which enter into the love attitude are in general more unconscious in character, further removed from our everyday standard of conscious thought and feeling and, on the whole, subject also to more violent and more permanent conflicts and repressions.

We have seen that, in its positive form, this love attitude The positive and negative aspects that have to be considered manifests itself in an incestuous affection—in the first place, perhaps always of the child for its mother; in what is perhaps a slightly more developed, but certainly a more easily recognisable form, of the child for its parent of the opposite sex; in a still more developed form, of brothers for sisters, or of more remote relatives for one another. In its negative form this attitude is manifested as a violent antipathy to any such incestuous attachment, at any rate in so far as this attachment assumes the sexual form or anything resembling such a form. We have here to consider, first, what can be the influences which bring about this incestuous attachment in the human mind—an attachment of such durability that, as we have seen, it determines to a large extent the nature and course of the whole of the subsequent love life of the individual, as well as of many of the activities which lie apparently far removed from the sphere of love or sex; secondly, given the existence of this attachment, what are the further influences which have brought about its repression—a repression that corresponds in strength and influence to the importance of the positive impulse to which it is opposed.

Let us consider first the positive side of the love attitude. Influences determining the positive aspects The influences which, we may suggest, play an important part in bringing about a strong tendency to the formation of incestuous affections in the human mind may be most conveniently grouped under a number of separate heads.

(1) First in time and perhaps also in importance would The long duration of human childhood seem to be a group of factors connected with the long period of infancy, childhood and youth, which characterises, to a greater or a less extent, all branches of the human race. During this long period, the child is, as we have more than once emphasised, wholly or partially dependent on its parents for the satisfaction of its needs. Now it is a fundamental tendency of the mind to experience pleasure in connection with, and generally to appreciate, those objects which administer to, or are associated with, the basic needs and requirements of the organism; i. e. the mind tends naturally to react towards these objects in a manner which, at a higher level of development, we should designate as love[226]. It is not altogether surprising then that, the parents being for many years associated with the fulfilment of the great majority of conscious needs, the nascent love of the child should be directed to them in a greater measure than to any other object.

(2) It is a pretty generally recognised fact that—in virtue Primitive sympathy reacting on the expressions of instinctive parental feeling of a process which McDougall[227] has conveniently designated primitive sympathy—among the stimuli which are most effective in producing any given feeling or emotion are the manifestations of that feeling or emotion in some other person or persons. Now it is generally admitted by psychologists that the presence of children tends to evoke an instinctive affection and tenderness on the part of the parents; the biological justification, and indeed necessity, for such an instinct, as well as for the fact of its existence being indeed sufficiently manifest—especially no doubt in women but to a considerable extent in men also. In virtue of this instinctive tenderness parents naturally give expression to their affection in the presence of the children, whereupon the latter, reacting through primitive sympathy, tend to experience affection in their turn and to direct it upon the nearest and most appropriate object—i. e. the parent whose manifestations of tenderness have aroused the emotion. This sequence of events being frequently repeated, the child's affections come in time to be firmly attached to the parent, reciprocating the affection he receives from this direction.